Tag Archives: Politics

Once again drugs have become the hot-topic, with scientists being put in the firing line for politicians and journalists to make an easy killing and rouse their rabid followers in jubilant screams of blood-thirsty ecstasy.

Professor David Nutt was the first to go, sacked for speaking the truth about the dangers of illegal drugs vs legal ones. One particular comment that caused him to be targeted was claiming that ‘taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than riding a horse’. Of course this led to the Daily Mail Taliban rushing in to condemn such a claim. ‘He is trivialising the deaths of victims of drug abuse’ they babble incoherently, gnawing at their collars and pulling their burqas close. What these zealots fail to see is that it is not trivialising to compare one statistic to another. If anything, it is they who are belittling deaths, but not of those who perish from the extremely rare reaction to E but those who die from horse riding accidents. Does the Daily Mail not think these are regrettable deaths? No, clearly they think a horse riding accident is a trivial laughable thing, and those related to the deceased deserve no sympathy at all.

Since the removal of Professor Nutt two more members of the council have resigned in support. I salute them and hope more follow suit. The government has for too long ignored scientific evidence and instead chased ‘tough’ headlines in the tabloid press. It is ignorant, cowardly and the actions of a theocracy rather than a supposed rational liberal democratic government.

Once again, the BNP are in the news; not just for the upcoming appearance of Nick Griffin on Question Time (an edition that is guaranteed to be a hoot!) but also for yet another leaked list of its membership.

At the moment, in the UK, we have a system of anonymity with our contributions towards the political process. The aim of this is a noble one: to free people from intimidation. However, it also has a negative repercussion, which is that it enables people to support unsavory political movements without that added hassle of “having to stand by one’s beliefs”. Another example of this is the typical “Tory bounce”, a phenomena when the Conservative party does better in actual elections than they appear from exit polls – because people are too ashamed to admit they voted Tory!

It’s probably also fairly important to note that the BNP deny the legitimacy of this list. Aparantly they have such few members that it’s very easy to quickly check.